Did you sing lullabies to soothe your newborn? For moms of preemies, crooning those tunes is proving more important that previously realised.

 As reported in The New York Times, new research on music and premature babies has revealed that exposure to live music, whether sung or played, can provide significant health benefits for preemies. The Beth Israel Medical Center in New York conducted the study and found that music can calm infants’ breathing, slow heartbeats, aid sleep, improve sucking ability, and more — all of which help the babies spend more of their energy on growing and developing.
 The researchers concluded that live music, played or sung, helped to slow infants’ heartbeats, calm their breathing, improve sucking behaviours important for feeding, aid sleep and promote states of quiet alertness. Doctors and researchers say that by reducing stress and stabilising vital signs, music can allow infants to devote more energy to normal development.
 And while the effects may be subtle, small improvements can be significant. Premature births have increased since 1990, to nearly 500,000 a year, one of every nine children born in the United States.
 The study, published this month in the journal Pediatrics, adds to growing research on music and preterm babies. Some hospitals find music as effective as, and safer than, sedating infants before procedures like heart sonograms and brain monitoring. Some neonatologists say babies receiving music therapy leave hospitals sooner, which can aid development and family bonding and save money.
 “Sound can be damaging. But meaningful noise is important for a baby’s brain development,” said Helen Shoemark, a music researcher at Murdoch Childrens Research Institute in Melbourne.
Scientists are far from done determining music’s impact, and there are certainly those who are sceptical about its medical value.

Dr. Manoj Kumar, a neonatologist at Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton, Alberta, said that while “studies have shown a benefit in heart rate and respiratory rate,” it is unclear whether that prompts clinical improvements, like removing oxygen or feeding tubes sooner, questions that the Pediatrics study did not tackle.

The two-year study, larger and more systematic than many efforts to scientifically evaluate art’s impact, separated musical elements — rhythm, melody, timbre — to see effects on heartbeat, breathing, sucking, alertness and sleep.

Over two weeks, 272 premature babies underwent several sessions of two instruments, singing and no music at all. The instruments and lullaby singing style were intended to approximate womb sounds, said Joanne Loewy, the study’s leader and the director of Beth Israel’s Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine.

Two-tone heartbeat rhythms were played on a “gato box,” a rectangular wooden drum. Whooshing sounds came from an “ocean disc,” a cylinder containing shifting metal beads. For melody, parents were asked for a favorite song. If it wasn’t a lullaby (someone chose “I Heard It Through the Grapevine”; another, “Pick Up the Pieces,” by Average White Band), therapists slowed it, changed meters to lilting waltzes and adjusted lyrics.

“Lots of times you see parents bopping the baby up and down on their lap, and there’s no purpose to it,” Dr. Loewy said. “You don’t feel the music intention as much as if you have a song that a parent has chosen.”

If parents did not specify, researchers used”Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”Tempos were coordinated with babies’ vital signs, indicated not only by monitors but also by eye movements and a chest’s rise and fall.

Researchers found that the gato box, the ocean disc and singing all slowed a baby’s heart rate, though singing seemed to be most effective. Singing also increased the time babies stayed quietly alert. Sucking behavior improved most with the gato box. The breathing rate slowed the most and sleeping was the best with the ocean disc.

"Every year I struggle to find the perfect Mother's Day gifts for my mother and mother in-law. These two ladies are easy to please, but I never feel like the gifts are good enough for them. In 2012, I decided to go with do-it-yourself gifts and spent $130 total on our celebrations. I decided to try DIY again in 2013, but this year I only had a $100 budget.

Here are the gifts I'm planning to make for Mother's Day 2013, and how much they are going to cost me.

Crocheted throw

For as long as I've known my mother-in-law she has cuddled up on the sofa with a throw or blanket to watch TV in the evenings. In fact, at any given time you will find at least two different throws in her den. I took my gift cue from that knowledge, and decided to crochet her a special throw in her favorite colors.

For this project needed six skeins of yarn, which cost me $3 each, for a total cost of $18.

Crocheted tablecloth

I began crocheting in December in 2012, and launched my craft Etsy shop in February 2013. Shortly after my mother saw my first crocheted blanket, she asked me if I could make tablecloths the same way. I told her I could and she asked me to make her one. I knew right then that when I made her one it would be for Mother's Day.

This is a rather large, and very involved project that will take me some time to finish. I'll be using four skeins of designer yarn that is a bit pricey at $8 a skein. I will also be adding some beading to the edges of the tablecloth, which will cost me another $10. In all, this project will cost me around $42.

Dinner

On top of the actual gifts I'm making, I'm also planning to host a Mother's Day dinner for our parents. This year will be slightly different because my husband and I are on a diet, so we have to plan a healthy menu. We are cooking lean turkey burgers, baked sweet potato "fries," romaine heart salad with zesty Italian dressing. The complete meal will cost us around $30.

All told, Mother's Day 2013 will cost me around $90. Once everything is said and done, I will have come in $10 under budget, and I truly hope this year's gifts are as well-received as last year's.

Feel like you’ve answered a hundred questions today from your curious little one? In actuality, you’re probably fielding closer to 300!

A Littlewoods retailer survey has revealed that moms field an average of 288 questions a day from their young children, with the number of questions asked varying by age of child. The most inquiries per day come from four-year-old girls — the survey found that the daily number of questions they put to their moms is an incredible 390!
IF you feel like you’re near the major prize in the Hot Seat chair on Channel 9 after a day with your young child, there’s good reason.
Mothers get asked an astonishing 288 questions every day by their little ones, a study by online retailer Littlewoods reveals.
Mother’s life going to waste
Girls aged four are the most curious, asking 390 questions per day - averaging a question every one minute 56 seconds of their waking day, Daily Mail reported.
The report, which surveyed 1,000 mothers with children aged between two and ten, looked at a typical day at home with the children for a mother and when they have to field the most queries.
From breakfast at 7.19am to tea time at 7.59pm, the average mother faces a testing 12.5 hour day of questioning - working out at one question every two minutes 36 seconds.
It is during meal times when most questions are asked, with young children rattling off 11. This is closely followed by a routine trip to the shops, prompting 10.
Some 82 per cent of infants apparently go to their mother first rather than their father if they have a query. A quarter of children, 24 per cent, said they do this because their father will just say ‘ask your mum’.
In all, a mother’s knowledge is in such demand the study found they are asked around 105,120 questions a year by their children.
The research found the number of questions asked by children differs with age and gender, with four-year-old girls being the most inquisitive. At the other end of the spectrum, nine-year-old boys are more content with their knowledge, asking a mere 144 questions per day.
Although the number of questions children ask falls with age, they increase in difficulty -so much so that 82 per cent of mothers admit they can’t answer them.